Architecture After Richardson - A Review
By
James Wudarczyk - posted September 24, 2006.

Margaret Henderson Floyd, Architecture After Richardson: Regionalism before Modernism – Longfellow, Alden, and Harlow in Boston and Pittsburgh, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press in association with the Pittsburgh History and Landmarks Foundation, 1994.

Somewhere between the dawning of civilization and the modern era of brutalism in architecture, there was a high period of artistic expression of beauty. Margaret Henderson Floyd’s massive coffee table volume explores some of the richness of the works of Longfellow, Alden, and Harlow via an array of beautiful photographs and supporting text. The compiling of a book is no small venture, and Henderson demonstrates her ability to create a literary and photographic study of the subject. Ample photographs of stunning beauty tend not only to be the main draw of the book; they also serve to entice curiosity, which, in turn, forces the viewer to seek out an explanation in the well-supplied text of the production.

Although the chapters tend to fluctuate between Boston and Pittsburgh, the reader will find that our city was well represented in Floyd’s study. In the search for material relating to Lawrenceville, one finds mention of the Carnegie Library on Fisk Street, which is the only Alden and Harlow structure in the community.

Floyd notes that illustrations for five branch libraries (Lawrenceville, West End, Wylie Avenue, Mount Washington, and Hazelwood) appeared in the Pittsburgh Bulletin in 1902, and all were modeled somewhat on the innovative Lawrenceville plan. In the text of her book, Margaret Henderson Floyd carefully footnotes other sources. Based on her own analysis and earlier documentation, the massive coffee table volume notes, “The most innovative and important of these Pittsburgh branch (all of them brick) was at Lawrenceville, a design that broke from Richardson precedent in both style and plan, with stacks separated from the general reading area. The symmetrical gable ends at Lawrenceville terminate with raised parapets and quoins in English baroque style, its pedimented frontpiece and the voussoirs in the ornamental arches of the windows being rusticated in white terra cotta. Only battered-stone basement that aligns with its sloping site retains a Richardsonian spirit. ‘Rather more decorated than . . . any other branch,’ the Lawrenceville library, which opened on 11 May 1898, housed twenty-five thousand volumes and incorporated for the first time a children’s room in addition to the general reading area, for a total capacity of thirty-three thousand volumes. The basement housed a study club room with newspapers and an auditorium for university lectures and other educational events. On the main floor a semi-circular wooden desk, placed in contrapuntal relationship to the curved stacks projecting from the rear of the rectangular building, set a precedent for the Pittsburgh system.”

While Floyd makes reference to the English baroque style of architecture, the Lawrenceville branch facility definitely bears characteristics of the French Renaissance, especially in the use of heavy ornamentation to highlight the entrance. Hence, the use of the ornate and ornamental gives grand style and elegance to an otherwise simple building. The effect transcends mere charming, making it invitingly elegant. Its wreath set in the middle of its temple-like pediment gives it an emperor’s crown. All eyes are drawn to the entrance, the centerpiece of the structure.

Floyd’s photograph of the structure clearly dates from a much earlier period. A long picket fence on the opposite side of Fisk Street is the give away. Although it was not Floyd’s intention, the author has further helped to provide photographic documentation of a portion of Lawrenceville from a period much closer to the opening of the library in 1898.

Although other libraries have been modeled after the Fisk Street library in terms of general style, none have been able to match the rich encrusting of highly ornate ornamentation resting like a crowned jewel on the façade of the structure. In more recent years, the entrance to the building has been modified; but, overall, the exterior still has most of the characteristics true to its original Alden and Harlow design.